Chapter 9
Nine
Three things hit me at once.
First, how had I gotten here without reading the book?
Second, knowing what was happening allowed me to immerse completely in the experience of being in a darkened train car at night with a mega-sexy vampire.
Third, and most important, the endearment. How had it not occurred to me the first time?
Chérie. Baby. Mon c?ur. All terms of endearment that felt the same. Both intimate and possessive, like I already belonged to them.
“Nolan?”
Pushing away from the doorframe, his eyes narrowed. The gown was gone, replaced by jeans and a tee. With the slight chill seeping in from outside, maybe this wasn’t present time either? It felt more like fall to me.
“Riven. You’ve a short memory, ma chérie.”
So not Nolan. I wasn’t one for coincidences. Everything happened for a reason, and no way the two men just happened to have the same endearment for me.
“Is this seat taken?”
I’d never met a celebrity but could probably guess what being ‘star struck’ meant.
I couldn’t formulate words to respond. Not with him beside me.
He was taller, smelled better, had a more magnetic accent, and just overall presence than anyone I’d ever met.
I supposed being alive for over seven hundred years allowed someone to refine their people skills.
“If I said yes?”
He reached out, as quickly as he’d appeared, and lifted my chin so our eyes met.
“I would convince you otherwise.”
His thumb moved toward my lower lip, tracing it. Then pulling down, he parted my lips, doing the same with his own.
“Scared?”
“Should I be?”
“I live in the shadows that most people are afraid of. Are you?” His secretive, devilish grin sent a shiver down my spine.
“Would you hurt me?”
His mouth widened.
“There is pain, and there is pain. You’ll have to be more clear, Lena.”
Remembering I was here for a reason, I grasped his hand, daring him to pull it away. He allowed it, chuckling. In fact, he scooted closer.
“Your hand isn’t cold,” I realized. “How is that possible?”
“Many things that are not supposed to be possible are very much so. Surely you’ve realized that by now?”
“Meaning? What do you know? About me being here?”
Riven turned toward the aisle and leaned back, stretching out like a cat who owned the world. “The heart repeats what it does not resolve. Every world you walk shows you a truth you keep running from.”
That hit something deep. “And what truth is that?”
His clear blue eyes bore into mine. “The heart repeats what it does not resolve. Every world you walk shows you a truth you keep running from.”
“That’s very poetic. But what truth?”
He studied me for a long moment, his voice surprisingly soft when it came.
“You look for the impossible, in your books, in your love stories, so you never have to see what’s right in front of you.”
Right in front of you.
More accurately, who was right in front of me.
I frowned. “You mean—”
“The answer is for you alone.” His grin was lazy, but his eyes weren’t. “And one you’ve known all along.”
I swallowed. “Why didn’t you tell me that before?”
Riven’s smile deepened, wicked and knowing. “You hadn’t opened yourself up or prepared to hear it. Fear held you back. Still does.”
The truth slammed into me like the front end of the locomotive we were sitting in.
“You said you touched yourself, thinking of me?”
A slow, devastating smile. But no response.
Impossibly, with Riven sitting next to me, I ignored him long enough to consider the possibility.
If I were being honest, truly honest, with myself … I had considered the possibility before. But shoved it aside for the very reason Riven mentioned. That and the thought of screwing up what we already had.
“If you’re a part of him,” I mused, possibilities racing through my mind.
“Part of him?”
He laughed. Why did that make him laugh? I wanted to go. I needed to go back to see him. Talk to him.
As if that was all it took, wishing it to be true, the smell of rain and damp steel was replaced by a more familiar one. I blinked. Once. Twice. Re-focusing on the book in my lap, the shelves around me and my phone ringing.
Picking it up, assuming it was Charlee, I was surprised to hear Nolan’s voice.
“Good thing. You had about five minutes before I came down there and broke in.”
He was clearly shaken.
“Where are you?”
“Boots and Brews. The guy started his first set. You told Mazzie you were coming early to meet him but weren’t responding to either of our texts. Lena, what’s going on with you?”
Shit. Shit. Shit.
“Nothing,” I said. “Tell Mazzie I’ll be there in a half hour and will catch him between sets.”
Silence.
Riven’s words still rung in my ear, the implications of my last two visits with Rowan and Riven blasting though any rational thoughts. Nolan and I needed to talk. No, I needed to think this through first.
“Are you there?”
“Yeah,” he said, his voice flatter than usual. “I wish you were. I’ll see you later.”
With that, he hung up.
Nolan had never, ever hung up on me before.
I scrambled to my feet, looking down at Father Simon’s book. Without bothering to even put it back on the shelf, I tore out of the back room and closed the shop in record time hoping I hadn’t screwed things up already.
* * *
He was still there, thank goodness.
Mazzie’s Maine guitar player was nailing a Willie Nelson song … no wonder she wanted him to come down here to play. Incredible.
“There she is,” Mazzie called from behind the bar. “I’m glad you could make it. I told Lem that you would chat with him about doing something in the store.”
“He’s incredible,” I said, trying to concentrate on my conversation with Mazzie but couldn’t stop watching Nolan, wondering what he was thinking. Usually, I could tell but tonight … tonight was different.
“What are you drinking?” Mazzie asked. “I never know with you. Could be beer. Wine. Mixed drink.”
Nolan and I exchanged a look. For the first time since I arrived, he smiled. Not his usual one that reached up to his eyes, but it was a start.
“She’ll take a Flight on draft.”
Mazzie looked at me, and I nodded as she walked away.
“How did you know I was in a beer mood?”
He shrugged. “I could just tell.”
Of course he could. Nolan knew everything there was to know about me. Well, except for one thing.
“So what’s going on?”
If I said ‘nothing’ or tried to pass it off, Nolan would see right through me. And I didn’t want more distance between us.
Just the opposite.
How could I have been so stupid, all this time?
“What are you like in bed?” I blurted, a vision of Riven popping into my mind. The question came out before I could stop it.
Mazzie’s amusement told me she’d heard the question, but instead of commenting, she slid the draft beer to me and hurried off.
The lazy, expert strum of the guitar and Willie Nelson’s words cut through my mortification at having asked, but it didn’t help. The song made me want to lean closer to Nolan.
“What do you mean?” he asked.
If Riven was somehow a version of Nolan, as he hinted, that meant Rowan was too. That correlation was obvious, but the vampire one … not as much.
Because I’d never even dared to think of Nolan in that way.
“It’s just funny,” I said, reaching for my drink. “We talk about everything, except sex.”
He blew out, as if expelling a demon. That Nolan thought of me as more than a friend couldn’t possibly be more obvious, now that I was looking for the signs. The way he looked at me now. The way he took care of everything in my life.
Took care of me.
But it wasn’t the Rowan version I was curious about. That one, I knew well.
“I’m not sure this is a great topic idea Lena.”
He looked at me, straight in the eye, when Nolan said my name. An answer wasn’t necessary. I already knew.
“I just never would have expected it. From you.”
“Expected what?”
Maybe dig yourself a deeper hole, Lena.
“I dunno.” I hated lying to Nolan. “I just get the sense there’s an edge to you I never knew about.”
And there it was.
Riven’s stare. One that went right through you. That showed he might not be gentle but it would feel really, really good. That my core actually clenched in anticipation exchanging a look with my best friend was bonkers.
Madness.
And yet, it wasn’t at all.
The last note of the song lingered, low and rough, as did his gaze.
“Careful, Lena,” he said, his voice like gravel and honey. “You keep looking at me like that, and people are gonna start talking.”
“Let them,” I murmured.
He blinked, then laughed.
A soft, surprised laugh. And so utterly him it unraveled me.
For the first time since everything started, I didn’t feel caught between worlds. I felt exactly where I belonged.